Ecoafriq eshop - Issue #7 Natural dyes. Colorant naturel..

The modern dye processes are unsustainable and damaging to the environment. For thousands of years, vegetables, fruits, teas, and other plants have been used to make homemade dyes to use on fabrics and textiles. Leftover fruits and vegetables materials, such as peels and skins, beetroot, blueberries, avocado skins, spinach, red cabbage, brown onions, plums, grapes, nettles, hibiscus flowers, turmeric, used tea bags- are some of the organic ingredients used for creating natural dyes in a variety of colours.

You can mix and experiment with different plants, fruits and vegetables scraps to see what type of colours you can create for your homemade natural dyes. The intensity and shade will vary, depends on what and how fruits, vegetables and plants are combined.

Blue: Blueberries, Red cabbage

Brown: Used tea bags

Purple: Red onion skins, raspberries, blackberries

Pink: Beetroot, blackberries, raspberries

Green: Spinach, leafy greens, nettles

Red: Beetroot, red berries

Orange and yellow: Onion skins, rosemary, turmeric

Purple: Blueberries

Madder root: Pink, orange, red

Mangosteen peel: Crimson, brown, dark brown, green, purple

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Material : Sugarcane and raffia straw

Closure: Zip

Features: Inner lining, coin/ wallet pocket. Handmade, sustainable materials, and strong enough for daily use. 

Colours: Natural OR Red earth, like pictures 

1.Place your chopped plants, vegetables and fruits into a saucepan and cover with water (use only raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables and plants).

2.Use twice the amount of water to the amount of fruits and vegetables.

3.Add ¼ cup table salt and one cup vinegar. The vinegar and salt work together to naturally lock the colours into the fabric.

4.Boil then simmer for about an hour.

5.Let water cool to room temperature and strain out the produce pieces and discard or compost.

6.Now your handmade dye is ready to use.

Place wet fabric in dye bath. Simmer together until desired colour is obtained. The colour of the fabric will be lighter when it’s dry. Also note that all dyed fabrics should be laundered in cold water and separately.

When we dye raffia straw, we place the dry straw in the dye bath and allow to simmer for 40 minutes to a few hours- depends on the quantity of the raffia straw and colours we want to achieve.

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Fabrics such as polyester and rayon won’t hold the natural dye. Hemp, linen, cotton, raffia straw-all dye very well with organic, homemade natural dyes. The beauty of natural dyes is that they are easy to make, non toxic to the environment, and helps reduce waste as it’s perfectly fine to use leftover fruits, vegetables, peels and skins.

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